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National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day 2024
Today is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Even after 83 years, this still matters.
Turning Point
Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation’s history and the world’s future. ~Joe Baca
Well, there’s nothing like a sucker punch to get one fully committed to a fight.
The USA had been playing at neutrality while supporting England with supply convoys.
There was an apparent safety cushion between the US and Imperial Japan in the form of the Pacific Ocean.
There is a LOT of open water between Japan and our West Coast. It’s roughly 5,480 miles between Tokyo and Los Angeles.
There’s even a lot of open water between Japan and Hawaii. It’s about 3,850 miles between Tokyo and Honolulu.
The Marshall Islands represented the closest Japanese-controlled waters at a distance of about 2,100 miles from Hawaii.
This is WWII we’re talking about. Sure, Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic in 1927, but it took him 33 hours to cross the roughly 3,600 miles.
Between 1927 and 1941, we were still flying propeller aircraft and certainly not at hypersonic speeds.
The assumption that several thousands of miles of open water ought to have served as a barrier for a country that was ostensibly staying out of it.
This is what happens when you ASS|U|ME things that are of vital importance. The Kido Butai task force took a northerly route over 12 days to avoid detection.
Intelligence had it that our illustrious battleships were all docked at Pearl Harbor like a bunch of cars at a drive-in movie.
Battleship Row might as well have been called Fish in a Barrel, and the results were disastrous.
Ultimately, even though the attack succeeded with dire and alarming consequences, it ultimately failed to have the desired result.
The Details
Pearl Harbor: The Day of Infamy | WW2 Documentary
In addition to the destruction of many of our battleships and other vessels, the raid was intended to cause more widespread damage to the naval installation.
They didn’t cause as much harm to the infrastructure as anticipated, so getting operational after the attack was quicker than the enemy had hoped.
They didn’t demoralize us with this surprise strike. As an honor or face based society, the Japanese expected us to react as they would if the same thing happened to their fleet.
They anticipated that we would react like the Russians had in the Russo-Japanese War in response to their surprise attack on Port Arthur.
They believed we would be shamed into negotiating a defensive pact to prevent future humiliation while they consolidated their power in the Pacific and SouthEast Asia.
That’s not how Americans react to a sucker punch. We didn’t get humiliated. We got pissed off. That’s what we do. That’s how we roll.
Americans like to get along with people, but if you fuck with us, we will grind you to dust.
What the Imperial Japanese also seem to have miscalculated is that they are not quite the size of California.
We, on the other hand, occupy about one third of the North American continent with all of the rich resources that facilitated our Industrial Revolution.
Getting on a war footing with a score to settle occurred much faster than Imperial General Headquarters could envision.
Much the same thing happened when nineteen hijackers took down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and kamikazed the Pentagon.
We got pissed off. We got in action. We got retribution. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda and its successor pustule, ISIS, are defunct.
Unfortunately, we seem to have a hard time staying mad and on task when we’ve got morons in the White House.
Thankfully, we voted for common sense this year. The incoming President will negotiate for peace and where necessary, rain hell on whoever doesn’t negotiate reasonably.
We’ll be turning off the money spigots to Iran to encourage them to stop stirring the damn pot.
The main problem is, we’ve had a mindless zombie posing as the guy running the country while untold millions have crossed the border unchecked.
It’s well known that countless mainland Chinese have entered illegally and possibly thousands of people who are on the terrorist watchlist.
So-called got-aways criss-cross our country unfettered. Up to 200,000 fentanyl deaths since January 2020 make the invasion seem all the more insidious.
That’s as if Richmond, Virginia or Rochester, New York or Spokane, Washington simply dropped off the map.
Imagine 200,000 people killed and what is the DOJ doing about any of it? Having a DEI seminar and letting murderers, rapists and gangsters run free.
We have millions of people whose identity is unverified roaming freely about the country. It only took 19 assholes to start the War on Terror.
We’ve now got persons unknown flying drones over military installations. What could possibly go wrong?
Can we say we’ve learned the lessons of Pearl Harbor and 9/11? Can we really?
Hopefully, whatever the current batch of saboteurs are up to will be foiled when the new administration starts on the mass deportations in January.
Hopefully, we’ll actually get there without another 9/11-style attack or without the Vegetable-In-Chief starting WWIII by letting the Ukrainians launch ATACMS missiles into the country that has explicitly said that launching attacks into their territory would be met with a nuclear response.
Serendipity is great while it lasts, but our luck seems like it could be running out. Hopefully, it holds until we get someone with a functioning brain back in charge.
Assumptions
Our military thought that they couldn’t get to Pearl Harbor, that it was too long a journey from Japan to get there, and they proved us wrong. ~Jerry Bruckheimer
Never underestimate someone who can benefit from some basic fuckery. The Imperial Japanese thought they could embarrass us into staying out of their way.
God only knows what the ChiComms are up to sending thousands of their military-aged men across our porous border while the lizard-person in charge of it claims it’s secure.
But this is the writing section of the blog. Current events and unknown adversaries aren’t supposed to be here.
Yet, they are.
I watched an advice video on how to write compelling villains the other day and I was, not surprisingly, disappointed.
They rehashed stuff they had said previously, but they also doubled down on the whole villains don’t see themselves as villains thing.
Okay, point stipulated. People always have an excuse for bad behavior. Jean Valjean just wanted to feed his sister’s starving kid, after all.
As an exercise in storytelling, great. Having a villain or antagonist who is a dark reflection of the hero makes a lovely counterpoint.
Annoyingly, they overstated their point and made it seem as if there were no purely evil people in the world.
Seriously, tell me how a guy who could rape a woman and beat her to death with a rock has some kind of tragic story arc.
Some people are critically damaged from the word go. Some people are devoid of the spark of basic human decency.
This animal sat in the courtroom with no signs of shame or regret. Be a real shame if he got shanked before bedtime on his first day in.
Did the Palestinians who perpetrated October 7th have a tragic backstory? No, they’ve been taught from a young age to be ruthless murderers.
To them, the Israelis are to be exterminated. Every man, woman and child in the entire world who is Jewish are to be eliminated, according to their beliefs.
They wore GoPro’s to record their infamy. They proudly called home to their parents to proclaim their bloodlust. They played soccer with severed heads.
There’s no complex arc. There’s no nuance. Some people legitimately suck and deserve to be dirt-napped.
So, when you’re writing, having a villain who is a counterpoint to your hero’s struggle is all fine and groovy, but the real world is a bit less nuanced.
Some villains are monsters. Some villains are irredeemable. Some people legitimately just suck, and it’s perfectly alright for the hero of the story to mow them down with righteous fury.
That’s all for today. Have a restful weekend and look forward to brighter days.